


Arac No Phobia

by Braindepository



Category: Sanders Sides (Web Series)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Gen, Spider Anxiety | Virgil Sanders, Spiders, Sympathetic Dark Sides (Sanders Sides), Tentacles Mentioned, warning for Remus briefly being Remus
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2019-11-27
Packaged: 2021-02-18 16:51:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,596
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21580876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Braindepository/pseuds/Braindepository
Summary: Virgil is accidentally outed as a spider, man.  Patton is Patton about it.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 370





	Arac No Phobia

**Author's Note:**

> First time writing for this fandom, so this is kind of a warm up. Brought to you by: Virgil and Patton's friendship is really important to me and that fact that my anxiety literally makes my feet cold.

Patton won’t stop staring at him. At...them.

At his legs.

Virgil has pulled and curled the monstrous segmented appendages as closely to his back as he physically can, but there is no hiding them. He can keep his mouth shut tightly over his fangs. He can pull the hood of his hoodie and his bangs down over his extra eyes. But his legs are enormous; longer than he is tall if he stretched them out completely. And it certainly isn’t as though they are something anyone will forget about now that they have been revealed.

No one is completely honest. Not with others, and not with themselves. Complete and total honesty does not make someone a good person. It does not even make them a nice person.

It’s no one’s fault. Thomas had not known what he was truly asking, and Deceit had tried his hardest to warn him off, to slither his way out of it, to not give away everything. But in the end, it is Thomas who is in charge.

It’s no one’s fault. Except maybe Virgil’s for being a hideous combination of person-shaped and giant spider.

He cannot shift the attributes away. He cannot shift anything about himself at all at the moment. Neither can Deceit, and although the serpentine side is entirely at ease with his own excess of limbs, Virgil knows he is utterly stricken at his inability to disguise himself. He and Logan are brainstorming ways resolve this, along with Thomas, but who knows if it even can be resolved? Only Remus seems unconcerned, leaving tentacle marks all over the walls and ceiling as Roman tries to corral him.

The noise Patton had made, when Deceit’s illusion had been yanked away still rings in Virgil’s ears, even though Morality’s mouth is now shut, with a hand pressed over it. Virgil stares at the ground in front of him, but he can still feel Patton’s eyes on his legs.

It’s too much.

“What’d you expect?” Virgil spits (not literally spits, but). “A cat?”

Patton should know better. Patton should have suspected. Thomas isn’t afraid of cats.

“Virgil...” Patton begins. And Virgil can feel himself shaking; his legs shaking. Not just the ones that are holding him up. He’s going to unravel.

“ **Stop staring at me.** ”

Virgil doesn’t yell. His voice deepens and distorts; doubles over itself and rings out as it always does when he’s at his worst. All he can hear is a rushing noise as he sinks down into his corner of the Mindscape so fast that he nearly loses his balance.

Thomas’ darkened and cobweb festooned living room greets him. He sits on the familiar stairs, his spider legs going limp behind him. He can never leave here; can never face any of them again, even if he does manage to change his appearance back. How can he? They’ll always know.

Patton will always be afraid. The thought races around and around in his head.

Virgil does not know how long how long he has been sitting on the stairs, with his knees pulled up to his chest, his face buried in his knees, his arms wrapped around his legs, and all of his other legs wrapped around the rest of him. The clock on the wall doesn’t keep time anyway.

There is a soft, polite knocking noise, although the way into Virgil’s room is not technically through any doors. The fine hairs on his horrible legs tingle. He can feel/smell/taste the intruder.

Virgil is on his feet; his inhuman legs raised behind him.

“What are you doing in my room???” He hisses.

To Patton’s credit, he barely startles. He has his hands in front of him placatingly. Virgil jerks his legs against his back, despite the little good it does.

“Kiddo,” Patton says, gently but firmly, “please: just listen to me. ...I knew.”

“You...what?” Virgil asks, because he must be hearing things.

“I knew,” Patton repeats. “I’ve know for a while.”

Virgil stares at him incredulously.

“How?” He demands.

Patton shrugs.

“Dads just know these things.”

He gives an almost grin that’s almost wry, but it’s too morose.

“Dads know when you’re secretly a giant spider?” Virgil says, both sarcastically and rhetorically.

“Well,” Patton allows, “maybe not all dads. But you weren’t exactly subtle about it.”

He nods towards the webs draped over the banister. He does not, Virgil notices, acknowledge the curtains.

Virgil yanks the sleeves of his hoodie down over his hands.

“You’re afraid of spiders,” he mutters, accusingly.

“Terrified,” Patton admits, to Virgil’s surprise. And then to Virgil’s continued surprise he says:

“But I’m not afraid of you, Virge.”

It's so sincere that it makes Virgil feel small. He’s standing on a flight of stairs looking down at Patton and he feels small.

“Why?” He asks. It comes out more suspiciously than he means it to

“Because you’re you,” Patton says, without hesitation. “You’re Virgil.”

Virgil sinks back down onto the stairs.

“You were afraid though,” he argues, but weakly. “You looked afraid.”

“I was surprised,” Patton insists. “Knowing isn’t the same as, well, seeing. And...in the moment I didn't know what to say, or do to help you. But I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let _you_ see that.”

Virgil shakes his head vehemently.

“No, Pat. You shouldn’t have to pretend you feel, or don’t feel stuff, just because you think someone else won’t like it. You shouldn’t feel like you have to...hide,” Virgil says, and then feels like a hypocrite.

He can feel, without looking, that Patton has settled carefully on the stairs beside him. Spider-senses.

“Hey,” Patton says, pointedly.

“Yeah,” Virgil tells him, “I’m aware of the irony.”

“As long as you know you don’t bug me,” Patton says.

And then.

“Get it?”

Patton jostles Virgil’s elbow gently with his own. Virgil groans, but can’t keep the tiny grin from tugging at his lips.

“You have the dad jokes ready, don’t you? You’ve been just waiting to use them.”

“You’ve got me there,” Patton admits. “But I also got you these.”

He hands Virgil a box he has conjured out of thin air, because they’re both personifications and that’s how personifications can roll. And by 'got', Virgil knows Patton means 'made' in much the same way.

The box is the size of a shoe box. Virgil opens it. Inside there is something knitted and purple with black stripes. Virgil pulls one of them out. It’s an arm warmer. The kind that stretch down over a person’s knuckles, with a hole for the thumb. Or two of them have a hole for a thumb. There are eight total. Six are thinner, and longer, and might very generously be described as socks. Virgil realizes very suddenly what they are supposed to be for.

“I can’t have the other half of this dynamic duo missing out on things because he’s got cold feet,” Patton says, cracking an actual wry grin this time, even as shadows are starting to gather under his eyes. Virgil hugs the box to his chest.

“Thanks Pat,” he murmurs.

“Now, you have to tell me if they don’t fit,” Patton begins. “I tried to eyeball it, but...well I wasn’t expecting you to be quite such a kiddo-long-legs.”

Virgil looks up from his fond contemplation of the pile of purple and black striped fabric to find Patton wringing his hands nervously.

“Is that...is that why you were staring at me?” Virgil asks. “So you could make me socks?”

“Well sure,” Patton replies. And then his eyes widen. “Oh. You thought...oh. Oh. Oh, gosh I’m a dunce.”

“No,” Virgil assures him, placing the box beside him and turning to face the fatherly side. “You’re the best, Patton.”

Virgil opens his arms, if hesitantly, but a brilliant smile plasters itself across Patton’s face immediately as he enthusiastically hugs Virgil in return. Virgil is careful to keep his extra legs well out of the way, but he thinks he might not always have to. 

“We should get you out of here, though,” Virgil suggests. Patton is beginning to sniffle. His newly acquired eyeliner is going to run. 

He takes the hand Virgil offers him gratefully, and together they sink out of one version of Thomas’ living room and into another.

“-three exotic dancers, one peanut butter sandwich, and hi Virgil; like the new duds,” Remus says.

The Duke is lying on his stomach in the middle of the living room floor, tentacles lazily and wet-ly slapping the ground beside him, like a dog contently drumming its tail as it sits. Roman is seated on his brother’s back, scrolling through his phone.

Between exiting his own corner of the Mindscape and re-emerging into neutral territory, Vigil has donned Patton’s gifts. The end of each long, dark, segmented leg is now nestled cozily in a purple and black striped sock, and his hands peek out from matching arm warmers.

“Very on brand, Peter Darker,” Roman agrees.

“And, you could put your dick in one!” Remus concludes.

There is another wet squelching noise as Roman smacks his brother over the head with one of his own tentacles.

“Joke’s on you,” the Duke crows, “that’s my kink!”

Virgil rolls his eyes. Beside him, Patton has a finger cheerfully in each ear.

“I didn’t hear him say that!” Patton insists, blithely.

"Sure," Virgil agrees, before raising his voice to get his fellow sides' attentions. 

"We're dealing with this the usual way, right?" He says, as Logan, Deceit, and Thomas rejoin them. 

They are.

Virgil takes his place on the stairs.


End file.
